“Before I accept your proposal, I’d like to see your W-9.”

*Although I’d love to take credit for this title, a friend of mine said it not long ago & I absolutely loved it.*

May 3, 2008 was the day I married the coolest guy I’ve ever met. My heart was stolen by Jason more quickly than I care to admit & I’ve never regretted falling for him for even one fleeting second. Pre-marriage we were both living single in two separate households which meant that we were both paying two house payments, two electricity bills, & the list goes on. Money was tight for the both of us & there wasn’t much extra to be spent. So upon becoming happily married we then joyfully combined our income. I’m not going to even begin to sugar coat how awesome it felt to each of us to have that extra paycheck coming in & the bills basically cut in half by having one household. It felt like giant anvils had been removed.

For the first several months we really enjoyed not being overly concerned about our financial state. Now here’s the part where you’re waiting on me to tell you we charged $14,000 worth of madness on credit cards & plunged into a deep black hole of never ending debt. Well, we didn’t. We ate out with our friends, paid our bills, & took a retreat trip with our church group. The only real debt occurred when we purchased Jason’s new (to us) car because he desperately needed a newer one to make the forty-five minute drive to & from work daily. Even with that purchase, we tried very hard to make a wise choice & balance what would work for him along with something we liked.

Of course along with marriage comes the wife (that’s me!) wanting to celebrate every second of marriage by calling it an anniversary. :) “Awww, we’ve been married for seven days, three hours, forty minutes, twelve seconds, & twenty milliseconds! Did you get me a card?” We did celebrate a little bit the first six months because we’ll never get that time back. But our six month anniversary is the one that has been life changing for us. It began our debt free journey.

We returned home from eating a celebration dinner & settled in on the sofa. The budget factor had been in discussion for a couple of days prior. I had told Jason, “I really think we can live on less than this.” That night we discussed our views on money in depth. Let me add here that we had serious money talks before we got married. Finances should be a deal breaker or maker for any serious couple. Nine out of ten marriages end in divorce due to finances (Source: This isn’t a research paper…I used Google. Heehee) & I’m not willing to risk my marriage on those stats. The whole “We can make it because we’re in love” thing isn’t going to fly when you’re hungry & the bills need to be paid.

We mutually decided that we loved each other way too much for money to always limit our choices in life. The budget began. We wrote down, erased, scratched out, calculated, & made a spreadsheet. When that madness was finally over I exclaimed, “We should have an extra $200 a month! Where’s it going?!” The truth was that we had no idea. That’s what a written down budget will do for you. Yes, it stinks to spend an evening writing down every single bill you have when you could be watching your “stories” on TV. But when you find that $200 at the end of it, you begin to realize how crucial that money can be to your family if you stop buying $200 worth of Starbucks, lighters, & plastic roses from the gas station per month. Check out the links provided to print FREE budgets that will help point you in the right direction.

Nevertheless -

http://tiny.cc/IrregularIncome

http://tiny.cc/MonthlyBudget

http://tiny.cc/QuickBudget